


Angel with a Shotgun

by PetDragon_Ryuu



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood, Blood Play, Doctors & Physicians, Dog Tags, Edgeplay, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Inspired by Music, Knife Play, Laboratories, Medical Examination, Medical Experimentation, Medical Inaccuracies, Medical Procedures, Medical Torture, Military Inaccuracies, Not Beta Read, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, People Will Die, Soldier Enhancement Program Era, Tags Are Hard, Tags May Change, Torture, Trigger warnings in the author's notes, eventual reaper76, just a little, kind of, non-con elements, not for the feint of heart
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2019-10-14 16:43:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17512238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PetDragon_Ryuu/pseuds/PetDragon_Ryuu
Summary: Jack Morrison had no clue what would happen after he signed the NDA's and medical wavers to sign up for the SEP. It certainly wasn't this.This being a mangled hell-hole where he could drop dead at any second.Haha.... I listened to Angel with a Shotgun by Cab for three days straight while reading a fic and in a fit of inspiration I cracked out the first chapter of this bad boy in under 12 hours.HELP ME TAG AND SUMMARIZE PLEASE





	1. Arrival Day-It Isn't Pretty

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [When We Were Young](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7762387) by [JudgeCoffee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JudgeCoffee/pseuds/JudgeCoffee). 



> This will be a multi-chapter fic. This won't always be fun for readers.
> 
> Also, I know I have it listed as explicit, it's not quite explicit yet. Chapter two is where we'll dig into all the juicy medical stuff that would make it explicit.
> 
> I don't know how I feel about calling anything medical "juicy" in this fic...  
> Also, for anyone who's just here to read my works and doesn't care about fandom, I know I should be writing in my open fic Cough Drops but... I have nothing... No ideas. So this is coming out before a proper chapter 13.

-

            John “Jack” Morrison didn’t know what to expect when he stepped out of the plane and onto the tarmac, but a small plain gray and square building wasn’t it. He’d been in basic for three months and then he was told he qualified for a special program.

            Before he got on the plane, he was told to call his mom one last time before mailing his phone home. He wasn’t going to have access to the outside world for the next year.

            He hadn’t heard of the Special Enhancement Program before that point, so he could only guess it was extremely classified information. Then there was the fact that only nine other recruits were picked to come out for SEP. Jack just knew this was going to be a ride. He and the other recruits were led inside the small building pretty quickly by a tall thin woman with, long slate hair, and a lab coat over a plain skirt suit that came out to meet them. She had simply called out with all the authority of a Drill Sergeant and they answered, following her inside.

            She led them past a receptionist’s desk and to a hallway where they lined up to face her. At the end of the hallway, there were a huge set of steel doors that were seemingly bolted shut. The frigid air in the building, the sterile and clean smell of alcohol disinfectants and the dead way the woman’s skin glowed under the fluorescent lights all added to the dreadful feeling in his gut and he could only assume his fellow recruits felt the same.

            “Your medical records have been evaluated, you’ve signed the NDA’s and wavers and all other legal documents, and you are the last soldiers chosen to be a part of this program. Only fifty of the brightest military doctors and research developers, one Strike Commander, one Colonel, and eighty soldiers will ever see the inside of these doors,” She says it simply. “And once you step through those doors, you are a part of this program until you die. You are officially the most elite rookies of your caliber. I am your group’s head medical observer, Doctor Marina Malark. Welcome, to the SEP.”

            It was like being told he was going to Hogwarts. Minus the wonder, joy and excitement of getting to do magic in 1990’s magical London. Then Doctor Malark went over to the doors and opened them with a retinal scan before turning to watch them file through.

            It was an elevator, but it felt like a refrigerator and there weren’t any buttons. Just a card reader and another retinal scan, which Doctor Malark quickly handled, and immediately the elevator plunged down. Jack thought his stomach was going to come up through his throat with how fast and cold it was in the steel box that seemed to plummet endlessly into the earth. When it finally stopped, one of the smaller male recruits next to Jack did vomit. Jack didn’t remember his name, but he felt bad for him.

            Doctor Malark paid the vomit no mind and just led them outside the elevator into an antechamber where she took a door next to a tile hallway. The antechamber was mostly empty, save for a trashcan.

            “This is the decontamination zone, it’s very unpleasant, and if for any reason, you go outside you will have to go through it again. I will walk you through the steps while following my own decontamination process,” Doctor Malark’s voice was somehow soothing over the PA where it wasn’t in person.

            Jack thought that was strange, but then he and the other recruits were told to strip and toss their clothes into the garbage and immediately he flushed deeply before pulling off his regulation shirt and pants, socks and shoes. Then water started to spray from the tile ceiling and walls of the hallway and Jack understood. The hallway was a shower.

            “Please go through in a single file line until you are all equally spaced apart. End to end.”

            They followed the instruction. They were fresh out of Basic, good little soldiers, of course they obeyed. Even the short and sick young man followed orders perfectly whilst looking green around the gills. After the water tried to melt their skin off with how boiling hot it was, they were blasted with a powerful misting hose that was freezing cold. It was the kind of cold that seeped into your bones and made you ache immediately.

            After that they had a foaming soap sprayed over them that they were informed would take care of bodily hair and that they were to rub it into their arms, legs, torsos and groins. Men and women groaned, but Jack as well as the other recruits did as they were told. Almost instantly there were gasps of horror as the hair started to fall off immediately under the too hot water that came back on. The hot water was turned off after they were hairless from the neck down and the cold spray came back. They were then told to go down the hall towards where they hadn’t been yet. There they stood on grates that dried them off and Doctor Malark came out. She was damp too and had changed into some sterile looking scrubs.

            She led them over to a shelf and handed out some standard looking mottled gray athletic leggings to all of them. The female recruits didn’t receive tops, nor did the males and Doctor Malark led them down the connecting hall. There were more doctors and Jack was swept away by one of them to an examination table and the next hour was a blur of medical nonsense.

            They had his medical records, but they put him through a full physical and took vials of blood, they tested his reflexes, agility, flexibility, strength, vision, memory sequencing and patience. By the time the hour and a half mark had come, Jack was getting agitated and light headed. He was likely hangry, though he couldn’t say for sure as the cold, disinfected scent of everything was making his stomach roll.

            Finally he was measured, everywhere. Which was beyond embarrassing as he had to drop the leggings they had provided to measure his dick too. And while they measured his entire body, he thought back to Vincent in Indiana to try and get out of his body. He couldn’t help but just hope that Vincent was happy. Jack and Vince had made it clear they had different dreams.

            “Alright,” Doctor Malark calls out to them as they finish up and give the women sports bras that match the mottled gray leggings. “SEP is a tight run ship, and it is a sub-sect of the military, however, you’re not expected to be soldiers every minute of the day. Outside of the labs and physical training, you can even tell your Colonel to eat shit and die.”

            She pauses as the recruits come to stand in front of her and the door she’s stood by, and Jack can’t help but chuckle along with the rest of the recruits. The thought is appealing, being able to tell off the Colonel of the SEP. If they even thought of doing that before they’d have been tossed out on their ears or hazed.

            “However, when we have you training or are in the labs, you’re to be the good little boys and girls your Drill Sergeant trained you to be. Or you will be punished severely,” Doctor Malark continues now, her face very serious. “I need you to understand, that while here, you are more test subject than soldier. You will be provided every comfort we are allowed to give you. But this is an enhancement program. The Omnics are dangerous, and we need a way to protect ourselves before they come for our home. If you notice any medical complications you come straight to me. If you are in pain, you come to me. Am I understood?”

            That was what made all this real. Not the plane-ride here, the awful shower or the invasive medical testing. Jack’s stomach twisted and rolled as he answered “Yes Ma’am” in unison with his fellow recruits.

            “Come get your identification tags and the first of what will be many, many injections,” Doctor Malark gestures the plastic tubs that the other Doctors brought her.

            They line up in front of the door and Doctor Malark uses an alcohol wipe on the arm of each soldier as they come up, before taking the cap off of a syringe and plunging it into their forearm with a practiced motion. After the soldier gets their shot, she hands them dog tags on a chain. One with their enlistment number from basic and the other is very strange. It’s just labeled “Soldier” and then a number. When Jack gets his shot, he’s shocked by how much fluid the Doctor is pumping into his veins with just the one plunger.

            His dog tags read simply 32557038 on one, and Soldier 76 on the other.

-

            On the other side of the door the new recruits were going through, including Jack, there were ten more soldiers. These guys had clearly been in the SEP for a while, and Jack was very intimidated by them. If he had to pin it on any one thing, it was how tall and ripped they were whilst also being completely silent on their feet. They were human tanks that prowled like cats. Then there was the intimidation factor of all of them wearing the exact same regulation shirts, pants and boots.

            The experienced soldiers were all six feet tall or more, and the women looked like they could crush Jack’s head like a pimple if they flexed and he was in the way; then the men had a shoulder to hip ratio that Hollywood would kill to have on screen. And, when the experienced soldiers saw them Jack actually swallowed, because they looked excited. They looked ready to eat Jack and his peers alive, sharks in the water.

            Except one, he was lounging by the next set of doors Jack assumed he and the company would go through. He looked bored actually; his face was a chiseled kind of handsome, with strong cheek bones and a prominent yet not unattractive nose. Then there were his eyes. His eyes were a deep warm dark amber brown that made Jack think of the one-time his father let him have whiskey and how warm it had made him feel. He didn’t look at the recruits like they were prey to be devoured; he didn’t even look at them. His eyes were somewhere far away, making him look like he was contemplating the world.

            “Rookies, I’d like you to meet my first set of soldiers,” Doctor Malark said from behind them. “Soldiers twenty-one through thirty, they are my pride and joy and they are only half-way through treatments. You will each be paired to one of them. They will be your roommates, your training partners, your guides. I suggest learning how to get along quickly, because I need you in peak condition to proceed with testing.”

            “Oh god,” Jack felt ready to die at that.

            No matter who he was paired with, there was the chance it would go horribly wrong for him. Even tall dark and handsome in the back, because these older soldiers could and probably would put him or his peers through hell at the slightest provocation; it was nature, and Jack was the little fish.

-

            Jack was paired with Soldier 24, also known as Mr. Tall, dark and handsome in the back, and he felt like the earth could swallow him whole, this instant, and he would still be embarrassed. Jack was unreasonably attracted to him, maybe it was his full lips and sculpted face, maybe it was because he looked like his body was carved out of dark tan marble, maybe it was because when 24 looked at him, Jack felt like he was cold, wet and naked again; exposed. 24 didn’t bother with introductions and Jack was too scared to start them off.

            So he followed where 24 led, feeling like a puppy. The next set of doors led to a hallway of elevators and 24 led him into one. Then 24 fed one of his tags into a reader which promptly spit it out and the elevator started a gentle ascent upwards.

            “This elevator leads to the ‘barracks’ and ‘training grounds,’” 24 says it quietly, his voice very gruff and warm with a prominent Hispanic accent. “Your enlistment tag goes in the tag reader. The elevator that was to the right of this one leads to the labs and takes your soldier tag. The other elevators don’t work with our tags or retinal scans so don’t bother. Everything is automated. If it reads, it reads, if it doesn’t then it doesn’t open. No way to cheat the system.”

            Jack pays utmost attention, this was all important after all, right?

            “If you’re sick, dying, or in pain go straight to Doc or get me,” 24 continues. “She can’t always give us pain killers or sleep aides ‘cause it messes with the injections, but she can give you heating pads, ice packs, warm water bottles, and if you can’t move, I can get her. Every week we turn in our dirty clothes and our shoes and they give us new ones. You’re going to feel sick a lot, injection sites hurt and are prone to gangrene and necrosis, keep them clean and keep blood flowing. We’re provided alcohol swipes, disinfectants and our rooms are automatically cleaned when we’re out.”

            Jack’s stomach started to twist again. Infection sites were prone to gangrene and necrosis? His limbs were going to rot and fall off!

            “There’s a common area, a game area, and a gym. I really suggest spending as much time as possible in the gym,” 24 doesn’t give Jack a lot of time to process. “If you’re tired enough, you will sleep no matter what hurts or how badly. Don’t get attached to anyone. Your peers or friends or whoever could get moved to ICU wards at any minute for any number of reasons, even me. It takes a long ass time, but injections and other tests get more deadly the more they go on. You’re not the first one to carry the seventy-six tag and if you’re not careful or don’t think, you won’t be the last.”

            Cold shoots up Jack’s spine and his mouth opens, fear making him want to ask what happened to the last 76. Before he can eek a word out, 24 is talking again.

            “The last batch of seventies died three days in. Three days, they keeled over blue cause they didn’t take Doc seriously when she said to go to her. If anything is off, she’s here to save your fucking life. She is in her office, twenty-seventy A, in the labs if she’s not with us. You go find her if you wake up with a bruise or you will die. Have I made myself clear?”

            Jack nods, feeling his mouth open and close as the elevator finally reaches a stopping point. His heart feels like its beating triple time, 24 scared him, but should he go find the doctor now? He was too cold and his heart was racing. That wasn’t normal-

            “Doctor Malark said that only eighty soldiers-“

            “Doctor Malark did not clarify that the dead ones didn’t count Rookie. Be smart about it, you’re scared right now, and that’s reasonable, but if you do as I say, she and her crew will keep you alive and one day you’ll be a big hero,” 24 is clearly very tired and leads Jack out of the elevator and Jack sees the common area for the first time.

            Soldiers are dressed either in the mottled gray athletic wear like Jack or they’re in regulation fatigues like 24 and they’re standing, moving, talking. There’s fake windows that stream “light” to bask in, the HoloTV is on showing some corny old movie and Jack is led down the hall by the fake windows. 24 shows him which door is theirs, it’s labeled with their numbers and 24 show’s Jack how to put his tag reader in before setting up the retinal scan to recognize Jack’s eyes in case lock down closes the tag reader.

            His and 24’s room is simple and quite plain and there’s another fake window displaying a field of flowers with an overflowing greenhouse in it; very different from the sunny valley in the windows in the common area. There was a couch, another HoloTV, a shelf on one of the walls with a few books, a mini-fridge, a desk with paper and pens available, and three doors on the back wall. 24 shows him that the doors on either side lead to small, nook-like rooms with beds and dressers, while the middle door leads to an actually nice bathroom that is fairly sized and has some nice appliances.

            “There’s a call button in the bathroom in case you’re dying,” 24 says simply. “Only press it if you absolutely need to be dragged to ICU.”

            Jack nods frantically; his stomach is doing flips again.

            “Alright, Rookie, welcome to Hell. I’m Gabriel Reyes.”

            Gabriel Reyes…somehow that name utterly suits him and Jack feels like he’s spiraling again. 24-Gabriel Reyes was simultaneously the most terrifying, and possibly the sexiest human being Jack Morrison has ever had the pleasure and horror of meeting at this moment. And, Jack somehow just knew that he really shouldn’t have signed up for this program.

-


	2. Panic! at the Labs-General of Discord

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm definitely playing around with my writing style here. Also, I failed High School Spanish all three years I took it, and I never tried to learn it after becoming an adult... I'm literally better at Italian, German, Hungarian and Croatian than Spanish. And I only know Croatian cuss words, how to insult your mother in Hungarian, Good Morning, Good Night and Yes Grandma in German, and I know enough Italian to play the Ezio trilogy of Assassin's Creed without needing the subtitles.
> 
> So I'm stealing someone else's notes for the Spanish. I know it's not prevalent in this chapter, but I want to write more Gabriel point of view down the line so... yea...
> 
> ALSO, the mood is set guys! That means we can get on with what I'm good at! Meaning character drama (my favorite) and-shockingly-visceral descriptions of awful things. For those who don't know me off A03, I've always been really good at raw, visceral descriptions of awful shit.  
> I make soup sound disgusting.  
> So, I really hope to have fun with that.

-

            The rest of Jack’s first day was spent doing nothing of importance. Which, since joining the military, Jack wasn’t used to being able to kick back and do _nothing;_ it felt like the world had turned upside down. So with nothing to do, Jack had gone to the gym after picking up shoes from next to his dresser, cheap replaceable yet protective footwear; and he spent three hours in his own corner doing his own thing. There were other soldiers in there, and they all made Jack feel incredibly small.

            He was average, 5’8” and a buck and a half of pure muscle from his time on the farm and in sports at his school and then basic, but the soldiers who’d been in SEP longer were lifting 800 pounds at the bench press like fucking gods. Jack could see the strain, they were pushing themselves hard, but they were lifting 800 pounds of steal. And, Jack was in the corner, struggling with the 120’s. He normally benched 115 but seeing the woman at the deadlift with her arms straining at the 800 pound weight was literally rending Jack to a state of feeling puny. So he went for the next weights up in his set.

            Then came dinner time, which was quite literally warm and filling, but not much else; and then it was light’s out for the rest of the night. Jack could barely sleep the whole time and he constantly felt these awful hot and cold flashes, when he got up to ask Reyes about it, Reyes said simply that the little injection at the door only had one side effect and the hot and cold flashes were it; so long as Jack wasn’t bruising or swelling, he’d live to see tomorrow. So Jack paced his tiny room between dresser and bed.

            The whole place had a still, dead air too it and everything was so clean and white and smelled so heavily of disinfectants that it left Jack feeling like he wasn’t just in some underground bunker, but buried alive.

            When morning came, the lights came back on by themselves. Jack only knew it was morning because of the AM stamp on the clock next to his bed and when he peeked into his and Reyes’ connected room, light was “coming in” through the window again. Then one of the doctors came in. He was like the other doctors, pale, looked dead, tired. Jack couldn’t really focus on them during his examination yesterday, but now that he wasn’t being put through his paces, he really saw it. This doctor, this man, was tired and pale, and did not look like he was having a good time with human test subjects.

            “Hello Soldier Seventy-Six I’m Doctor Addams, Doctor Malark’s assisting doctor,” Doctor Addams’ voice is hollow as he introduces himself. “You and Soldier Twenty-Four are to report to the labs this morning after you’ve eaten. You’re going to want to stick to light and easy food.”

            Reyes had come out to go to the bathroom just in time to hear that and Jack saw his face turn gray and he looks more tired than he had before. Jack gives the doctor the affirmative and steps out of his room properly. He also had to use the restroom, but with Reyes in there, he didn’t want to walk in. Then Jack heard the shower start, he frowned but sat on the couch in their room, watching the door and shaking his leg.

            As the water shut off, it occurred to Jack that he hadn’t seen towels in there and Reyes wasn’t going to change into dirty clothes to go to medical testing in a lab, and he hadn’t been holding clean ones. Before he could contemplate that thought and readjust his line of action, Gabriel Reyes walked out of the bathroom naked and it was like slow-motion. Jack watched as thick rippling thighs carrying the jacked, beefy torso of a very fit man. Reye’s had unreasonably muscled arms too and Jack’s eyes followed the unrelenting V of muscle that was Reyes’ torso too-

            _Jack you thirsty corn-fed bitch. Pull yourself together._

            Reyes was hung like a fucking god. But Jack just forced himself to blink and swallow so he wouldn’t drool and he went back to his room to grab towels, cursing his awkwardness of forgetting and then stepped into the bathroom to shower.

-

            Over breakfast, their Colonel came out to greet everyone. All eighty men and women, and the older recruits didn’t seem phased but Jack and the other nine he came in with were ready to shit themselves. Mostly because the man was intimidating, he stood at a solid 6’6” and a look in his eyes that made him seem both a thousand years old and barely alive.

            “I’m going to be honest with each and every one of you. Recent research from the head of medical says that each and every one of you could drop dead at any second. You’re all an experiment. Your lawyers told you that when you signed the NDA agreements… You’re all incredibly brave to take this on and we’re honored to have you. Seeing as we’ve reached the eighty mark again…let’s try to keep it that way.”

            Then he left, leaving all eighty soldiers to their hot food.

-

            The nice bathroom and hot breakfast couldn’t begin to make up for what was in store for him at the labs. Reyes tried to prepare him on the walk there, but there was another recruit and their partner in the elevator and Reyes didn’t look like he liked Soldier 26 all that much. It seemed Doctor Malark worked in groups of 4, or tried to at least. Upon entering the labs, which were divided up into different rooms on either side of a long hallway, they had to strip and line up again-in lab 27A that Malark called them over to-and Malark and Addams measured them physically _again_ before strapping them, still naked to examination chairs. There, Jack had his first ever IV drip inserted.

            “This fluid is a ‘watered down’ version of the serum I developed for this program,” Doctor Malark explains, mostly to Jack and the other recruit that came in yesterday. Jack tried to remember his name, but they hadn’t been under the same Sergeant and all he could think of was Jacoby. “See, we need it to reach all vital muscle tissue for it to work properly. Try not to scream. There may be some burning…”

            As she said it, Jack felt the fire start. It was a slow licking heat that started in his forearm, and continued towards his wrist and fingers, setting his palm to a scalding temperature.

            “This is completely normal,” Doctor Malark intones, calm, her dead eyes completely emotionless as she watched the four of them burn.

-

            Pulsing flames radiated up Jack’s arm into his chest and set his body ablaze. His muscles contracted and pulsed under his skin, his tendons felt like they were snapping; even his bones were useless jelly and Jack’s jaw clenched as he tried not to scream. The straps holding him down felt like weights crushing his lungs, there just wasn’t enough air, and black danced at the corner of his vision like a threat. Jacoby was screaming, Jack had remembered or one of the doctors had said it trying to get him to calm down, it was all a blur. Jack doesn’t really care anymore; he just wants Jacoby to shut up.

            He was the sick boy on the elevator, Jack wanted to tell him to shut up but he was loathe to think of the embarrassing noise he’d release the second he unclenched his jaw and stopped focusing on breathing. He’d looked over to Reyes just once, in the first five minutes, and his gorgeous face had been red and sweating. He wasn’t tensed like Jack, though his abs and thighs shook and spasmed at random, and he seemed to be breathing through his nose.

            Jack couldn’t stare at him for long though because a fresh wave of awful heat rushed to his head and he fell back into a world of trying not to scream.

            When they were released and the IV drips removed-the bags of what Jack was going to call Hell Fluid were now empty-Doctor Malark didn’t give them time to get over the crippling fiery hurt still pulsing through their bodies. Jack was told to get up and follow her, so he did, limping on both legs. He couldn’t remember a time before this where even all ten of his toes hurt. It was like walking on a floor of upturned, scattered thumbtacks or sharp gravel on a day where you could fry an egg on the sidewalk.

            After hobbling after the Doctor for what felt like forever across a floor that felt worse than broken glass, they were shown into a room with four metal tables. Jack wanted to puke because they looked like the autopsy tables from every crime show he’d ever watched. He still had to get up onto a table, because he was told to. But, touching the cool metal, which Jack had foolishly thought would be a relief, made it feel like his skin was splitting and ripping open.

            He finally caved and released a pitiful, full chested whimper at that. Tears started to drip down his face, thin cold bile coming out of his nose as he forced himself to get onto the table and lay down on his back. His entire body screamed at lying down and he had to fight the urge to arch away from the cold metal.

            “Now, a few minutes in the freezer to slow blood flow and you should be right as rain to go to the resting rooms until this evening when I will need you to go to lab room twenty-seven B,” Doctor Malark’s voice makes Jack want to hit her, and hit her hard.

            He wants to knock the teeth out of her mouth and watch her bleed. For now, he glares at her as she and Addams wheel him, Reyes, Jacoby and 26 to this horrible looking steel door. Malark opens it with the push of a button and gives the four of them a dead smile.

            “I’m very sorry,” she doesn’t sound sorry.

-

            Jack lost it in the freezer, his body too raw. He’d started to sob and cry. His skin felt nonexistent, he was just a raw exposed nerve in a cold metal box on a cold metal table, serrated knives cutting into every inch of his exposed body. His lungs were useless dead wastes of space in his chest cavity, and right next to him, Reyes was counting. By the time Reyes reached 120 Mississippi’s, Jack was internally begging every known deity to shut Jacoby and himself the fuck up. The sound they made, between his sobbing and Jacoby’s screams and the small metal box’s great acoustics, was driving a great big headache in-between Jack’s ears and behind his eyes.

            Suddenly, the doors opened and despite his body protesting the motion Jack shot up. The metal slabs were pulled out, and they were given the soft mottled gray leggings, blankets and thin slippers. Jack pulled them on hurriedly, almost preferring the Hell Fluid to the freezer.

            His body ached like all the fluid had been burned out of it, his eyes were dry from the cold and Reyes was quick to lead them back up the hallway of labs and to a room where cots lined the back wall, and big comfy couches and huge armchairs filled the open space, a water cooler by the door, with two bathrooms nearby. There was a small stereo playing music in the corner though, and the soft, calm music was almost ironic to Jack.

            As soon as Jack sat on a couch, he launched himself to the restroom because his stomach heaved. He barely made it to the toilet before he puked up everything. His breakfast and his dinner from the night before and every drop of vile his stomach had to offer the porcelain throne. Jack’s body heaved, trying to force out more that he just didn’t have to give. It felt like his stomach was crawling up his throat and he heard Reyes come in.

            “I figured. You’re going to want to drink some water and tell Doc when we go back for more,” Reyes' voice is smooth and low, a deep timbre that just rattles Jack’s core.

            Before Jack can protest, Reyes picks him up off the floor. Jack really didn’t want Gabriel Reyes’ hands on him, afraid that the older man would somehow feel the big fucking gay attraction Jack felt towards him on his skin, but despite Jack’s weak struggling, Reyes pulled Jack out of the bathroom and laid him out on a couch. He curled up tight and he felt more than heard Reyes sit close to him.

            “Alright kid, the first day is usually the hardest. Just watch for bruises at the injection sites,” Reyes frowns like he’s swallowed something nasty. “The freezer only happens three times. You don’t have to worry about it for another six months. You have bigger things to worry about.”

            Jack regrets joining SEP-

            _“Your grandfather would be ashamed of you John.” His father had never been so cold with him. “This farm has been in our family for six generations!”_

_“So that means I can’t do anything for myself? I’m not you Dad! I can’t just stay in this small town my whole life!”_

_“When you walk out of that door you better not come back then!”_ -

            Until he remembers that moment, when he grabbed his runaway bag from under his bed and ran off with Vincent in the other teen’s truck. Vincent’s parents let him finish out his senior year, he was elected student council president, won Prom King, graduated Valedictorian, and worked at Vincent’s Dad’s Auto-mechanic shop until he could buy a car. At 19, he bought an old car, a 1967 Shelby Mustang that had one good ride left in her. He made it to Vegas when she finally gave out-her radiator melting and her transmission one spark away from setting the engine ablaze, and walking to his hotel from the strip mall one night, he was saved from being mugged by a military soldier. Jack hitch-hiked to Fort Carson in Colorado after that and joined their Basic program.

            He didn’t just join SEP, he was offered a chance to become someone else’s hero like that soldier had been for him.

            “What can you tell me about the program?” Jack asked Reyes, still shaking with a foul, acrid tasting tongue. “Training, labs, all of it, what do I need to look out for?”

-

            Gabriel had never seen someone go from half-dead and laid out, to calm and in control so quickly. There was this strange sort of sunshine that made those cornflower blue eyes seem so fucking- _cojeme_ -charismatic. It was like little 76 and his little twinky body housed something bigger so he sits back on the couch, his shoulders burned in protest and he considered the little blond. He was so soft, Gabriel felt he might break the other if he wasn’t careful, and his buzzed off crew cut looked awful, yet it was like that old Captain America movie, where Steve Rogers just smiled and people followed and god Gabriel wanted to follow that smile.

            That smile had potential, even for someone as jaded as Gabriel.

            “Training is not like in the Basic program you’re used to. There’s ranked fights, scored simulations, the daily exercises is stuff you should be used to drills and shit; but simulations vary from hard, to impossible and the ranked fights are awful. There’s no rules except win,” Gabriel starts with training, because it’s easier to explain. “Labs are trickier…”

            76 just gives him that golden smile again.

-

            “Tell me,” Jack insists.

            “The worst labs are the tanks. The tanks are actually hell. They strap a mask to your face so you can’t see, there’s this thing that goes over and in your mouth and holds it open, a tube is shoved down your esophagus so they can feed you, another mask so you can breathe and you’re dropped into a huge tube of water,” Reyes starts. “They run currents of electricity through it pretty much all the time you’re in there and they increase the water pressure at random intervals. And when the electricity does stop that’s your only chance to go to the bathroom cause the water rushes down around you for a minute. You’ll have fasted before-hand so no solids but uh… yeah. Tanks are the worst.”

            Jack’s stomach turns at the description he’s given before he nods in understanding.

            “Most of it is just days and days of injections and IV’s,” Reyes continues. “But the freezer comes every six months, every other weekend is tanks, and weekends when you’re not in the tanks, you’re probably getting blood tests, tox screens, and physicals. Every morning with breakfast, you get another shot.”

            Jack grimaces at the thought of another physical so soon and pulls his aching knees to his chest from where he’s laying down; giving Reyes more room on the couch they’re on. Across the room, 26 and Jacoby are talking quietly too There are other soldiers in the room too, but he doesn’t know them and he can’t see all their tags. He doesn’t care so much about them.

            “First week is basically just labs,” Reyes explains. “Then at the six month mark you get another week of  just labs, then your final week at the year mark. If you make it out of the program you move to the base a hundred yards over and are monitored whilst training. But after the first weekend, Monday through Thursday is training, Friday is labs, Saturday is labs, Sunday morning labs end, Sunday afternoon is recovery. You do get some free time. Like now, between labs and after you have about four hours on Fridays. Half an hour on training days.”

            “This is what I signed up for, for the next year, then huh?” Jack grimaces but pulls himself together, hugging his knees a little tighter.

            _Be strong Jack. Remember why you’re here. So that one day, you’re the bigger fish helping out the little guy._

-

            The rest of his free time in the resting area was spent huddled under his blanket, shivering cold and yet feverish. He talked to Reyes for a long time, for a really long time. They ended up talking about nothing in particular, but Jack learned that Reyes had already been military long before SEP and had even been Captain of a team of agents, and that Reyes was from Los Angeles and spoke fluent Spanglish of the LA dialect.

            Then they went to lab 27B and were strapped down to examination chairs again, IV’s stuck in their opposite arms from the first time and Jack was subjected to the Hell Fluid once more. This time, he told Jacoby to shut his stupid crying maw. When they were released to go to their rooms, Jack’s body could barely handle the pressure of walking, but he limped after Reyes and as soon as his head hit his pillow, he was out like a light.

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and Kudos really make my day, I love when people interact with what I write.
> 
> PS I wrote this instead of sleeping, and I don't sleep ever so... yay. Also! I don't have a beta reader! So I may have repeated myself a few times and I know I was struggling near the end-so tired. If you want to get to know me better and become my beta reader for shit, or help me with the Spanish, message me on discord. My server link is down below, and it never expires!
> 
> I should also mention I'm probably going to go over and edit this chapter tomorrow and change it a little. Add some details. For now, I'm sleeping.
> 
> I did a kind of edit. Minor retcon I guess.
> 
> I have a friend who was raised in a military family to help with some of my questions. So... still inaccurate but I'm not blowing hot air out of my ass.


	3. One Thing Ten Reasons-Stay Alive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hell is often a condemnation, but honestly I'd welcome the torture right now.

-

            Jack had once thought, quite naively, that he’d known what pain was. His arm had been crushed in an incident on the farm, his wrist had been broken in six places and the bones in his forearm had snapped in three, he’d even been in a car accident that broke his thigh bone at some point. But broken bones meant a break, pain killers, a real hospital and his mother. He didn’t mind not having his mother baby him, he didn’t mind not having pain killers, he didn’t mind no hospital, he was already in a sterile grave.

            What Jack did mind was that there wasn’t really a break.

            After his first week of labs, labs and labs (all injection series that put him so out of it he doesn’t remember much save for nearly puking every other minute) he went straight into training. It was pretty standard stuff; run for 12+ miles, drop and give me X amount of hell, belly crawl through mud and barbed wire, wall climb, jump like the inglorious testing monkey you are, go to the shooting range. Four days a week for 16 hours a day, Jack’s life was ruled entirely by standard training. But, what was interesting was the massive underground training fields. They were beyond large at six miles long in one direction, 4 in the other and roughly a thousand feet tall, and the synthetically replicated sky and absolute sweltering heat did nothing to trick Jack’s mind into thinking he was outside.

            The grass was real, trees, mud, dirt and everything else was all real in here. But the sun was not, and Jack knew it. The air was too still and stale on his tongue, but what got to him was Thursday’s training. They were told to line up at a shooting wall and they were handed out standard issue Helix Security International pulse riffles. The thing about HSI pulse rifles was that to operate one, the wielder needed what was known as a Helix Security International exo-suit like the Raptora Mark I or II just to survive the kickback. For a minute, Jack thought the Colonel was joking when he ordered them all to fire, but the Colonel did not joke.

            The kickback from the rifle slammed the butt of it into his ribs, knocking the breath out of him, nearly breaking said ribs and as his arms gave up he dropped the riffle, then was smacked in the face by the recruit next to him doing the same causing his lip to split and jaw to ache, and landed on his ass a whole 10 feet away from where he’d started. His body screamed; his hand felt like he’d shattered it, his ribs and tail bone felt broken and his ears rung with the noise from the beast of a gun.

            Jack was beyond humiliated when Reyes, from behind him, started to chuckle. The new recruits had all had just about the same experience, and Jack picked himself off of his ass despite the shaking and nerve deep burning pain in his arm, chest, shoulder, and back and goes to grab the pulse riffle again. He just stands back up and wobbles on shaking knees back to his spot, ready to shoot again if he’s told to.

            “Trade off with your older partner.”

            Jack put the safety on the rifle and shook and stumbled his way over to Reyes and shoved the rifle into the older man’s hands, ready to watch the hottest man he’s ever seen stumble and shake as well. He watches the 20’s line up where Jack and the other 70’s had and scoffs when Reyes smirks over his shoulder. The call for the shot comes and the 20’s shoot. No one falls over or smacks another in the face. They just grunt. All of their shots land on their targets too. Fatal blows.

            Jack wants to curse the 20’s for being perfect and just grits his teeth. Instead, of cursing Gabe the second they limp from the training grounds, Jack seethes into his dinner that evening where he’s sat with the 70’s across from the 20’s. There’s a female on his left, and two men on his right that both seem worried. They’d been in the same training unit, Jack thinks, but he’d kept his nose to himself and didn’t bother with people too often. As a kid, he’d had a difficult time making friends because half the time, he couldn’t get enough interest in people to peak unless he found them attractive in some light, or if they contributed to his goals. Jack, as a kid, wanted good grades, and to impress his father with an active interest in sports, so he hung out with two kids in his class who’d helped him achieve those goals. He did eventually grow to actually care, and they were good friends for a long while.

            Jack had been attracted to Vincent in a powerful way because Vincent was everything Jack wanted to be. Independent, naturally kind, giving, thoughtful, and the more Jack considered that, the more he realized he wasn’t living up to his goals to be that person anymore. Admittedly, he’d gone full blood hound and joined the military when he’d added becoming a protector to his list, so he hadn’t failed entirely. Though, he also supposed his intentions were good while his actions fell through.

            As was per usual with Jack and his good intentions, the blond could only place blame on something he felt he lacked. Though what that was, he was clueless.

-

            Jack’s first time in the tank, he thought Reyes had underplayed the sheer severity of electricity being pumped through pressurized water around him. Jack’s everything had started to numb when the water somehow got heavier in every direction, but that numb didn’t help when the water started to crackle with an impossible amount of energy. It was like needles made of hot light piercing every single inch of his skin, every millimeter of muscle, and every single nerve. He had immediately jerked and tried to get out of the tube he was in, hands jerking at the masks keeping him breathing. Only for the pain and needle feeling to ramp up until his inhibited vision went from gray, to pitch black.

            When Jack next woke, he was still in the watery tube and his hands and legs were bound as he floated in this endless haze of pain and darkness.

-

            The next two weeks, Jack was so often exhausted or sore that he had little to no concept of time. The only reason he knew when Thursday came around was because they were told to shoot the pulse rifles again, and it kept ending badly for Jack. After the hell that was his first two weeks, and then there was the fact that he felt so dismal on Sundays he couldn’t even enjoy the afternoon of “recovery,” Jack fell into a specific rhythm. Eventually though, Jack seemed to come out of it long enough to register that he’d gone through his whole first month of injections without checking the injection sites.

            He had such an episode over it that Reyes actually came out of his room where he was hidden after they had been let out of the tubes and frowns.

            “The hell is wrong care-chimba? You lose a testicle? Why are you flipping out?” Reyes’ face is agitated and he has stubble growing in despite regulation and labs requiring clean shaven and smooth.

            Jack can’t help but squeak though, as he had not expected for Reyes to hear him freaking out in the small corner between the wall and dresser of his room. Let alone for the larger, and shockingly sexy man to actually slam open the door to Jack’s room and look for Jack where the blond was curled up tight and barely breathing. Jack used to have a lot of moments like this in high school; moments where the air wasn’t enough, his vision would spot out and he’d just drown in his own body. It was humiliating; it made him feel weak and small with a twisting sense of being wasteful and useless. Moment’s like these happened when Jack felt like he’d let someone down, like when he hadn’t made the football team and his father had just stared at him like he was a foreign being.

            Reyes just seems to look at him for a moment and the hot shame already in Jack twists around into something far uglier as hot tears sting the back of his eyelids.

            “Why didn’t you tell anyone that you have panic attacks?” Reyes has softened his voice and takes slow but deliberate strides towards Jack’s corner.

            “It’s not a panic attack. I’m fine. I just need a minute to breathe,” Jack hugs his knees a little tighter, wincing as his sore arms stretch at his sore shoulders.

            “Why can’t you breathe? Tell me how you got here,” Reyes looks agitated, but doesn’t say why and that hurts Jack too.

            Jack just shrugs at first, his mouth opening and closing uselessly for a long time before he takes a simpering breath in and words start to pour out of his mouth. “It’s the air I think, down here. Stale and still but this has happened on the surface too. Please don’t look at me like that… It’s like you’re seeing through me and I don’t know how I feel about that except that it’s really hot right now and I feel like my heart is going to escape through my throat. God I wish my stomach could just choose if it wants to leave my body or not cause the twisting is getting unbearable-“

            Reyes cuts him off with possibly the softest gesture Jack has ever seen come from those big hands and the darker skinned man pulls Jack out of his stable little corner with a sigh, pulling Jack close and pressing Jack to his chest, Reyes’ chest was broad and warm and sturdy and far better than the cold, sterile, concrete walls. And, as he presses himself into the hold, he feels less exposed, and safe, and warm. It’s probably the first time he has been comfortably warm since he stepped into the elevator instead of unendingly hot like in the training grounds or unbearably cold like everywhere else in the facilities.

            “What you’re going through is called a panic attack Seventy Six. You wanna tell me what set it off?” Reyes asks quietly, his voice rumbling in his chest even as the hot sting of tears behind Jack’s eyes turns into a flood.

            “I didn’t check my injection sites all month,” Jack manages to choke out the words, his voice cracking as he lets Reyes know what’s wrong.

            The older man sighs and grabs Jack’s arms, pulling them out to check the injection sites where Jack got his injections every day. Reyes had large hands that could grip a great deal of Jack’s arms the first week that Jack was in, long tan fingers curling around the meat of his arm easily. Now Reyes’ grip had less reach, and Jack thought it odd at first. That is, until he remembers that he’s constantly being pumped full of chemicals to enhance him.

            “No bruising, no black spots, no marks save for the injectors.” Dark fingers slide down Jack’s upper arm towards his elbows, and he just blinks, feeling foolish for crying. “Muscles are forming. Does your back hurt? A frequent sign of bad shit is back pain…”

            Jack considered his back, it ached from training, and the recent Thursday he spent firing a pulse rifle and getting knocked on his ass. It was sore, but there wasn’t pain. He told Reyes as much and the older man nods. For a minute, Jack’s blood runs icy before he studies Reyes’ face.

            “You’ll be fine. You should tell Doc that you have panic attacks though. Explains why they have to bind you for tanks,” and Reyes moved Jack back to the simple hold that had calmed him earlier.

-

            For whatever reason, that seemed to open up Reyes to him, though he didn’t ask for Jack’s name, which set the blond on edge. It was a strange, one sided relationship, Reyes would talk to the 20’s in Spanish, ignore Jack throughout training and after training, drag Jack to the gym where he pushed the blond so hard that when they went to their rooms, Jack rarely made it to his bed and would just pass out on the couch as Reyes settled down to watch some TV novellas that they had been given on recordings. There was no cable or internet in or out of the facilities, so the soldiers put in requests for recordings.

            It took two more weeks before anything about their dynamic changed, and at that point, Jack felt like he’d been rubbed raw, inside and out from the injections, labs, and training. This time, when they went into the training room, the forested and rolling field was gone. In its place was a gray building that seemed sturdy and old and dull. It had no windows and the Colonel stood outside of it with the doctors.

            Most of their troupe of eighty was divided unevenly into two groups by the time Jack and Reyes showed up with the 20’s and 70’s

            “For the next month, you’ll be running a prison escape training simulation. Soldiers Twenty One through Thirty, You’ll be joining soldiers One through Twenty as the guards. The Guards are also to extract information from the prisoners using any means they deem fit. You’ll be given guns with rubber bullets and tactical armor and you’ll be expected to keep your prisoners alive with the help of the doctors on site. If you can keep your prisoners for the next month, you’ll get a break and get to go topside for a week.”

            Jack felt Reyes stiffen next to him, and Jack could practically feel Reyes’ energy levels rising, it was like electricity tingling nearby. Meanwhile, Jack’s heart was pounding in his chest like a freight train.

            “Soldiers Seventy One through Eighty, you’re joining Thirty One through Seventy as the prisoners. The faster you escape, without telling the guards anything and take over the prison, then your training rankings will go up. If all of you escape, you’ll get a week topside. This is a ranked exercise for all of you. Failure means more training and less time to sleep.”

            Almost immediately, Jack looks at Reyes and he feels this strange spark. They both want to win, and Jack has the feeling that Gabriel Reyes is the type to do anything to be at the very top. There was a reason that the last he heard, Reyes had the highest ranking in their ranked training sessions, and Jack didn’t think it’d be easy to catch up. Gabriel Reyes, he’d been hanging around the older soldier more, and while he didn’t know Spanish, his simpleton Farm Boy mind had started to pick up on things.

            Reyes was a private person, the 20’s called him “El Rey de la Sangre,” Reyes was prone towards walking loudly so as to not startle people, but could also go anywhere so quietly it was like he’d ghosted over, he was aware of himself as an imposing figure, and he hated the food that the facility offered as “Mexican.” Before Jack could really process what was happening, Reyes shoved him towards where the other 70’s were headed to join with the prisoners. His hand was harsh against Jack’s chest, and almost tipped the blond over entirely. Jack just barely managing to trip over to the other 70’s after being handled so harshly.

            “Go on Seventy Six, go play with the other inmates while the big kids handle the real toys,” Reyes’ smirk was all play, but his eyes screamed otherwise.

            Those dark eyes told Jack that this was the furthest thing from play for Reyes.

            “It’s Jack, not Seventy Six, and you’re an ass.”

            Reyes just smirks, still walking back towards his group. Jack wishes he could wipe the floor with that stupid, smug face.

-

            The first day in the prison simulation was actual hell. Jack was nauseous from the new injections they got at the doors and one of the 10’s took way too much pleasure shoving him into a cell with another 70. Specifically, Jack is in a 10 foot by 10 foot by 8 foot cell with 72 who has this look on his face like a scared little kid. 72’s name was Cedric Hayworth as Jack learned within the hour. He was barely 18 and Jack felt bad for him, as Cedric was from an even smaller farm town-buried deep in the blue hills of Kentucky-than Jack. They’re first night in the cell, halfway through the night, Cedric started making these long agonized sounds.

            Like a dog in a bear trap, Cedric howled for hours until a guard came to take him to the doctors.

            The next day, Jack had a new cellmate and soldier 16 was pulling him for an interrogation. Jack was pulled down gray stone halls by his cuffed wrists to a room that was roughly the same size as his cell. Unsurprisingly, Reyes was in the room, looking very smug as he leaned against the stone wall. Jack just sighed and let soldier 16 cuff him to the chair in the center of the room, looking up at Reyes the whole time. Admittedly, Gabriel was the best looking thing in the awful gray room.

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hell is often a condemnation, but honestly I'd welcome the torture right now.


	4. Say No to This-Can You Feel My Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING FOR BLOOD, KNIVES, NON-CONSENSUAL TOUCHING (not sexual but still...) TORTURE (somewhat graphic) FORCED NUDITY, HUMILIATING SITUATIONS, AND DEGRADATION! IT'S NOT PRETTY! Thank you.

-

            Gabriel Reyes was not an idiot, he was many, many things, but an idiot was not one of them. So, he knew singling out Seventy Si-Jack was a pretty dick move. The blond had a rather obvious crush on him, and was more than out of it from Gabriel’s attempts to distract him from the fact that soldiers would drop like flies and be replaced by newbies. Gabriel’s method of distraction worked though and if Jack knew how many of his peers were dead men walking; Gabriel had no doubt that it would have a toll on the blond. Soldiers either took to the serum and treatments to activate it, or they didn’t and it mutated and killed them. That’s why Gabriel had tried to keep from learning Jack’s name, but now that he knew it, it stuck in his craw. The same way a strange or pleasant taste would linger on the tip of his tongue, Gabriel found himself fixated on the flavor of Jack.

            However, intrigue didn’t dictate Gabriel’s actions. Jack was not the first soldier he’d interrogated today, and he knew the blond wouldn’t be his last no matter how this went, but something was nagging at him. The way that Jack looked at him was off.

            Jack…

            Gabriel took a deep breath and pulled his knife-a beautiful ambidextrous piece that was technically made for hunting-from the tac-harness he wore, watching the minute reactions of Jack’s face.  He couldn’t help the internal quiver as those big blue eyes widened at the sight of the knife, but when Gabriel didn’t see any fear come out to play, that’s when he started on Jack. A sharp and dry ripping sound accompanied Gabriel’s knife as he used it to remove Jack’s shirt and he stared at the younger man for only a second before gesturing to soldier 16-Jaiden Babcock, a handsome young dark skinned man who seemed to be getting through the serum like himself and Jack-to get the box from his new office as head guard.

            That had been something else, upon walking in, being the only vet in his group, everyone nominated to put him in charge. Gabriel couldn’t say he liked it, but he organized and delegated most of the night so he could come up with a plan to keep the prisoners down and get info out of them. Of course, Gabriel was used to getting his hands dirty when it came to torture-it was nothing like the movies kiddos-and the sadistic part of his mind wondered how Jack would take torture, but Gabriel was eager to get his hands dirty again.

            Finally, Gabriel uses his knife to strip Jack of his issued pants and underwear, before removing his socks and shoes as well. The blond looks so confused, but Gabriel just ignores that confusion. Instead, he waits for Jaiden’s return, which is quick and Gabriel pulls one of the dog collars from the box. He and the other guards, after divvying up the prisoners into cell blocks, had found a great deal of strange items that Gabriel recognized as torture devices everywhere. The box of dog collars had weirded out Gabriel’s set of men until he explained that it was a sort of humiliation thing. He’d used it on prisoners before in a much different ‘the Geneva Convention didn’t know he was there’ kind of way.

            Jack looked confused by the dog collar himself, but Gabriel doesn’t answer the question in his eyes. Instead, he puts the collar on Jack and watches the blond raise an eyebrow. Before long, Gabriel is pulling Jack through the halls as he’s naked and cuffed with his hands now in front of him. He pulls the blond along towards where he set up his guard house, taking the long way through the cell blocks.

            It was then, that Gabriel realized that his little blond, while indeed prone to panic, had no shame. It was an infernal realization that came when the blond simply chuckled at being cat called and wolf-whistled by the other inmates in the cells. Gabriel simply couldn’t swallow his pride to admit that there was no chance of this working, so he dragged Jack all the way to the guard house. There, he let the other guards, some of whom Gabriel knew since his days in basic and even special-ops, play with Jack for a bit while he made sure shit was in order for the other prisoners.

-

            If his past ever surfaced, Jack would never live it down. If anyone knew that John “Jack” Morrison had done things to get off that no sane person would, he would have no choice but to hunt them down and kill them or run to a hidden mountain to hide the shame. So being walked on a leash, naked, past people he didn’t know, was not the strangest thing he’s ever done. He wouldn’t say it was pleasant, though since being stripped-while fully capable of actually taking stock of his body-he realized that he’d lost all lingering traces of baby fat and his shoulders had broadened, his thighs had tightened, and he was just kind of… tight all over. His body was practically rebuilt from the ground up.

            There were no flaws that could be seen from his outside anymore. And, Jack wouldn’t say the lingering bruises from the last Thursday’s pulse rifle training were a flaw to be ashamed of. So, of course he preened when walked past the other prisoners. He even preened for the guards, who took him from Gabriel. Most of them were females, but Jack still sighed and pressed into their petting and groping.

            His preferences didn’t really matter at the moment and they didn’t touch his dick, so he felt fine. They were admiring the changes in his body, after all, the last time he had really been seen by anyone, he still had acne scarring on his shoulders and stomach and his thighs were definitely on the…well the inside of his thighs had been significantly too soft for his own bodily preferences. That wasn’t an issue anymore.

            By the time Gabriel came back, Jack had managed to get comfy on the dog bed laid out on the floor of the guard house and wasn’t fighting the fact that his lead was loosely tied to a hook on the wall. Jack could honestly say he felt smug enjoying the dark glower of disbelief on the older man’s face. Honestly, the darker skinned man was priceless. And, Jack could confidently say that he’d never seen Gabriel look quite so livid. Jack practically had his head in one girl’s lap, letting her pet him and comb his hair with her fingers.

            “Rodriguez!”

            “Oh hush Reyes. He’s cute,” the girl huffs, petting through Jacks short blond hair again.

            Just then, another guard comes in. The same one who brought Gabriel the box with Jack’s collar, and he just looks shaken by Jack’s comfort at lying on a dog bed and being treated like a dog. Jack just sighs and rolls from his stomach to his side, letting Rodriguez-apparently-pet and stroke Jack’s stomach like he really was a dog. Her hand is firm against his stomach, which is flat and seems to be more defined from the rest of his torso than before. He wasn’t counting abs, but there was a distinct separation now.

            Not that Jack wasn’t fit before but now that he was starting to look something closer to a man that worked out in Hollywood for his next shot at the silver screen rather than some farm boy from Indiana; and Rodriguez’s petting was very pleasant. Her hands weren’t soft, and she was more fit than Jack, but she was gentle with him.

            “I always wanted a dog Reyes,” she grins. “Torture him when he’s not being the guardhouse puppy.”

            “That’s not how this works. And even if I allowed it, he’d be my dog-not yours!” Gabriel says immediately, furious dark eyes locked on Jack who simply sighed. “Don’t sigh at me Seventy-Six!”

            “I don’t know what you’re so upset about Reyes,” Rodriguez huffs, standing between Jack and Gabriel. “You walked him in here like he was a dog, and now you’re upset I’m treating him like the puppy he is!”

            Jack finally just sat up in his dog bed, folding his legs under him to look up at Gabriel with the most serious puppy face he can manage, doing his best impression of a begging dog. Gabriel just looks offended and buries his face in one hand. Jack simply waits, watching Gabriel as he gets peeked at from between fingers. The older man sighs and goes over to the wall, pulling Jack’s lead from its hook. He hooks the lead under his boot, yanking Jack so his head is on the floor and Gabriel kneels over Jack with one hand on the blond’s back.

            “Are you a dog Seventy-Six?” Gabriel asks, eyes dark and promising a world of hurt.

            “Woof.”

-

            Gabriel could actually feel his blood pressure rise exponentially at the little shit’s barking for him. Jack was a fucking menace, a deranged, unhinged little boy who had no clue what shame was and Gabriel wanted to see how far he could go before the blond broke. So, he stands and pulls Jack along, not letting him get up and not minding the horrible scrapes Jack is probably getting on the floor. Jack doesn’t complain, so Gabriel doesn’t mind. He just leads his dog along the floor.

            Gabriel gets to his office and he once more unsheathes his knife before grabbing Jack’s hair and bending him over the desk in there. There weren’t papers to be mindful of; there was just him and Jack, and the knife he was trailing over Jack’s skin. God, pale skin was made to bleed-

            “You’re gonna cut me right?” Jack asks quietly, unafraid.

            “Dogs don’t speak.”

            “They don’t typically get cut up either.”

            “But you do,” Gabriel says it with simple authority, and finally presses the blade of his knife in, dragging it along the line of Jack’s ribs.

            He really does look pretty like this, Gabriel hadn’t cut deep, that wasn’t the point of this, but still the wound was a crimson line on the blond’s back. Gabriel made a matching one on the opposite side of Jack’s ribs carefully, using his ambidextrous skills to his advantage. Jack didn’t squirm or cry, he looked kind of complacent actually, content with where he was and what was happening. So, Gabriel cut again, following the hard muscle of Jack’s ass this time. It was so cute, watching him pant and sigh now that Gabriel had a reason to enjoy it, and he keeps cutting. After a while though, after Gabriel has cut and sliced where he’s pleased, he pulls back and notices that Jack is shaking and paler than usual.

            Up close, it was hard to tell, because he was so pale before but it was obvious now. Jack had sat there and panted and moaned under him while he practically bled the boy out entirely. Gabriel’s desk was covered in the red and sticky blood and Jack was shaking, covered in a light sheen of sweat with blue lips and-

            _Holy fucking shit!_ Jack was hard between his bare thighs, despite barely having enough blood for a pulse at the moment. Unashamed, naked, collared like a dog and laid bare, and Jack was still over the desk, expecting more, with this dazed and glassy look on his face. Gabriel could actually feel the power trip rushing to his head and just tried to calm down and breathe, even as he watched Jack’s skin knit itself closed unnaturally fast where the blond had been cut into. Even with the super soldier juice doing its job though, Gabriel knew Jack was feeling weak and dizzy. Just looking at the clammy blond was enough to know this, so Gabriel shook himself out of his head, and moved to get water.

            Suddenly, he felt dirty as he got water for the pretty blond over his desk. He was just supposed to torture him a bit, not nearly fucking kill him in a misplaced sexual act of-

            _WHAT EVEN WERE HIS FEELINGS?_ Gabriel had no clue what to do with himself beyond helping Jack recover from the blood loss. Which, he did without complaint. He picked up the blond with a towel, laid him across the threadbare couch in his office and fed the blond water until Jack’s eyes had an ounce of light back into them. With Jack coming back to awareness, Gabriel picks him up, brings him back to the guard house, and drops the blond with Rodriguez and Babcock. Then, Gabriel went to get another prisoner from the cells.

            This time, he just goes about the process without feeling anything. He strips the guy, collars him, parades him around, and doesn’t immediately go to the guard house, but brings him to where they had made a makeshift mess-hall; the rest of Gabriel’s unit was in there. Gabriel proceeds to have the prisoner lay on his back with his limbs up while he let the soldiers and guards demean and verbally abuse the prisoner.

            It was totally a normal torturing session, the guy was tight lipped and didn’t break down, but he looked close the whole time and Gabriel appreciated how normal it was.

-

            When Gabriel next sees Jack, Rodriguez is feeding the blond little bites of food and the blond’s lips are no longer blue from a lack of blood to provide oxygen. He’s still pale, but Gabriel is relieved to see Jack recovering quickly and he sees how tame the puppy looks with this sort of relief in his chest. The blond had laid out across the dog bed once more and even Jaiden was petting him while looking over security footage. Jack noticed him, obviously, and Gabriel sat close watching the blond.

-

_Gabriel always wondered how he got himself into situations where he was in trouble with his father._

_Admittedly, Gabriel was prone to making bad friends which aided in his bad decisions. But, his father was also a part of the problem. At 21, and working a job, helping pay for rent and food for his mother, grandmother, and sisters, Gabriel should’ve had the freedom to-on his days off-go party like the rockstar, glitter and glam life of California could provide. This party invitation had been from a friend Gabriel had went to high school with, a smart girl whom always seemed to know everything and had invited Gabriel into her bed more than once. She was not a bad friend, her weed was bought legally at a shop for it, her booze was bought legally as she was a year older than Gabriel, and her parties were quiet and typically consisted of a handful of friends making a bonfire at the beach._

_She was quiet when she picked Gabriel up, seeing as he shared a car with his mom and didn’t want to inconvenience her. She drove him the three hours south to a quiet beach that no one went to, and when they got there, Gabriel was given a pipe and a beer and sat next to familiar acquaintances. Then, like everyone else, he sat back, relaxed, and blazed._

_Apparently, despite having given the man his check before dinner, going out quietly to chill with friends was wrong. His dad had used an old tracker in Gabriel’s cell to hunt him down and when he came to the beach, the party went from chill to frozen as Gabriel had a screaming match with his father about his free time, it ended in blows and Gabriel’s father calling the police on his own son._

_After 72 hours jail time, being given a slap on the wrist, and told to not assault his father again, Gabriel went home, almost broke the lock getting in-thanking his grandmother for letting him in after she told him the locks had been changed-grabbed his shit, and left. He didn’t have a car, he couldn’t afford one because he was giving all his checks to his dad for food and rent, he didn’t have money, he’d just given away his last paycheck before being arrested, he only had the clothes on his person and whatever of his shit he could cram into his backpack, suitcase, and gym bag._

_Gabriel had effectively and immediately been kicked out with next to nothing._

_So, Gabriel did what he did best, he went to his friends, asked for a place to stay while he sorted out work and looked into moving as far away from his family as possible. His sisters didn’t get half the shit he did because they were girls, so he wasn’t worried about them, he was worried about himself._

_He called into his job, he sent out a new resume so he could look for a better job, he went out and worked 12 hour shifts 6 days a week, Gabriel woke up, grinded at his wheel, and kept going until he passed out. Then, one day, he had enough money to buy a bus ticket to get to some cousins in Vegas, so he went and crashed there. His cousins were military men, they always had been-even after being honorably discharged after severe injuries, so they encouraged Gabriel to go out and join too._

_He did, since it meant getting even further away from his Dad._

_He joined and was working his way up ranks and through different training like a fiend until he found himself doing things that were entirely black operations. Information redacted, high security clearance required, don’t pass the red tape stuff that often left Gabriel feeling strangely… breathless._

_The killing part, never, but the torture he was trained to give and endure was what got to him. It drove his instructors mad that Gabriel’s natural response to pain was pleasure, and he had no fear of death, so drowning, choking and burning all had rather-to say averse was an understatement but-averse effects on him. And administering torture made him light headed and fuzzy in his head._

_So rather than teach him to ignore pain-mental, physical, emotional were nothing to him at this point-they taught him to discipline his mind and endure it. His commanding officers were all intense men and women who knew how to steady his mind…_

-

            SO HOW HAD JACK KNOCKED DOWN ALL OF HIS WALLS WITH A LITTLE WHIMPER?!

            Gabriel sat up from where he’d sat down to take a nap and looked around for a sign of what had woken him. He didn’t dream of his father often, and when he did it was fitful, but he knew he wouldn’t just dream of home without reason, or wake up out of nowhere. Then, he saw it.

            On the floor of his office in the fake prison of the underground SEP facilities, Jack-the fucking blondie-was laid out on a cushion. It didn’t look like a comfortable sleeping arrangement, what with Jack’s arms bound behind him and his legs hanging out on the rough stone floor, but what had woken Gabriel was the soft whimpers coming from the blond. Those whimpers were going to be the fucking end of him at this rate.

            And with that acknowledgement, Gabriel’s wrathful anger consumed everything in his chest, leaving him hot with his face, hands, and lungs tingling and aching while his vision filled with red.

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a discord server if you want to talk to me directly. You can tell me about continuity errors, misspells, or give me ideas for later chapters or fics.  
> https://discord.gg/ChxcREy
> 
> I know I'm super slow with this fic. I'll try to update it twice a month at maximum, once at minimum. 
> 
> Recently, I've been watching Kim Possible clips online and I never noticed before how much Kim shaped my sexuality. Like... I was shipping her and Monique before I knew shipping was a thing. Cute guy comes on, he was paired with Ron. Even my little child brain was despairing hetero-normative relationships on TV. Alas, I was also really happy when Ron and Kim got together.  
> So yeah...Maybe I just really liked love in all it's forms as a kid. I was a huge romantic back then.  
> A depressed, miserable romantic, but still romantic...

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and Comments inspire me to keep going, they really do.
> 
> ALSO, I have a discord server if you want to talk to me directly. You can tell me about continuity errors, misspells, or give me ideas for later chapters or fics.  
> https://discord.gg/ChxcREy
> 
> And yes, I did give Jack Morrison the same Enlistment number as Bucky Barnes from the MCU. I literally couldn't think of anything better.


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